Her life has taken her from a failed marriage in Sydney to freedom in London; she forged a modest career as a seamstress and lived with two dear friends through the happiest years of her adult life.At home, the neighborhood children she remembers have grown into compassionate adults. They help to nurse her back from pneumonia, and slowly let her in on the dark secrets of the neighborhood in the years that have lapsed.With grace and humor, Nora recounts her desire to escape, the way her marriage went wrong, the vanity that drove her to get a facelift, and one romantic sea voyage that has kept her afloat during her dark years. Her memory is imperfect, but the strength and resilience she shows over the years is nothing short of extraordinary. A book about the sweetness of escape, and the mix of pain and acceptance that comes with returning home.

    Literally cutting a swathe through the bush with their bare hands, they lay claim to territory beyond government jurisdiction - and the reach of the law. As she accepts a position on one such farm, seventeen-year-old Kate Carter is unaware she is entering a land of outlaws, adventurers and murderous natives.Because the first people of this new world will no longer accept the white man's advance, and retaliatory attacks on both sides have made it a frontier on the brink of war.Into Kate's path comes Bronzewing, a young white man schooled by a settler family yet raised within an Aboriginal tribe. Caught between two worlds, Bronzewing strives to protect his adopted people and their vanishing civilisation.But as he and Kate will discover, 'beyond the outer limits' is a beautiful yet terrifying place, where it's impossible to know who is friend and who is enemy . . .'Alexander writers [with] a deep love of the land' The Courier-Mail

    Harriet Purcell leaves her conventional, respectable home and respectable, passionless boyfriend and moves into a rooming house owned by Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. There, Harriet finds a life she relishes -- excitement, adventure and passion. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz makes a living from telling fortunes, and is mother to 4-year-old Flo. Beautiful little Flo is mute, and Harriet comes to love her as if Flo were her own -- and must protect her at all costs when tragedy strikes! Angel is Colleen McCullough at her vintage best, drawing on her own experiences of living in the Cross in the 1960s and writing of a world that has long gone. Most of all, it is a tale of a woman's love for a child, and what she is prepared to endure to ensure her survival.

    I buried my mother. My grandfather buried a swimming pool. A boy who can’t speak has adopted me. A girl kissed me. I broke and entered. Now I’m fantasizing about a guy who’s a victim of crime and I am the criminal. I’m going nowhere and every minute I’m not moving, I’m being tail-gated by a curse that may or may not be real. They call me Friday. It has been foretold that on a Saturday I will drown…Friday, 17, flees memories of her mother, granddad, and the family curse. She joins Silence in a street gang led by beautiful charismatic Arden, and escapes to a ghost town in the outback. In Murungal Creek, the town of never leaving, Friday faces the ghosts of her past. Sometimes you have to stay to finish what you started, and before you can find out who you are, you have to become someone you never meant to be.

    Dad’s new delivery boy, Rory, is a welcome distraction and even though she knows that things aren’t right at home, she’s starting to feel like she could just be a normal teen.But when Mum finally gets out of bed, things go from bad to worse. And as Mum’s condition worsens, Anna and her family question everything they understand about themselves and each other.

    Tears of the Moon is the thrilling and dramatic story of an endless love that overcomes all odds.Lily Barton's most prized possession is a beautiful tear-drop pearl pendant. Alone in the world, she has no idea where it came from or why she has it. But she is desperate to learn more of her forgotten past, to find her identity and claim her legacy, whatever it might be. Seeking everwhere for answers, she discovers her great-grandmother Olivia's diary. Across the years it reaches out to her, revealing the truth behind a love that is so profound, so passionate and so complete, that nothing can destroy the power of its magic.

    Hush. Be still for just a moment. Hear its thundering waves crashing on unseen shores.Spanning four generations, with a focus on the 1960s and 70s, an era of rapid social change and burgeoning Aboriginal rights, Where the Fruit Falls is a re-imagining of the epic Australian novel.Brigid Devlin, a young Aboriginal woman, and her twin daughters navigate a troubled nation of First Peoples, settlers and refugees – all determined to shape a future on stolen land. Leaving the sanctuary of her family’s apple orchard, Brigid sets off with no destination and a willy wagtail for company. As she moves through an ever changing landscape, Brigid unravels family secrets to recover what she’d lost – by facing the past, she finally accepts herself. Her twin daughters continue her journey with their own search for self-acceptance, truth and justice."This evocative family saga celebrates the strength and resilience of First Nations women, while touching on deeply traumatic aspects of Australian history. Threads of magic realism shimmer throughout the story, offering a deeper understanding of reality and challenging the reader to imagine a kinder, more just, more human world." Sally Morgan, Author of My Place."In poetic and evocative storytelling, this writing celebrates the agency of Indigenous women to traverse ever-present landscapes of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. Country has an omniscient presence in their story lines, guiding the women across vivid desert and coastal landscapes. Where the Fruit Falls recognises both the open wounds of living histories of colonisation and the healing power of belonging to Country." 2020 Dorothy Hewett Award judges.

    I hold their anticipation for three seconds, and then, while they're all ablaze, I say out loud, 'I do think I'm better.'As far as Bani Adam is concerned Punchbowl Boys is the arse end of the earth. Though he's a Leb and they control the school, Bani feels at odds with the other students, who just don't seem to care. He is a romantic in a sea of hypermasculinity. Bani must come to terms with his place in this hostile, hopeless world, while dreaming of so much more.

    Her father wants her to be a dutiful daughter, waiting for an arranged marriage like her sister Ruby.Running is a quiet rebellion. But Amber wants so much more - and she's ready to fight for it.It's time for a revolution.

    An engaging, entertaining read set in 1930s Sydney against the backdrop of the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge...evocatively drawn.' - Books+PublishingBroke and hopeless in 1929, Yo O'Keenan flees the violence of his home in Chippendale, and by some miracle charms his way into a job on the Harbour Bridge, a new start for himself and his little sister, Agnes.Meanwhile, on the north side of Sydney, in her cluttered cottage at Lavender Bay, a young and ambitious costumier, Olivia Greene, works on her latest millinery creations, dreaming of taking her colours to Paris, London, New York.A random encounter in the Botanic Gardens sparks a powerful attraction, even as the gulf between this pair seems wider than the blue mile of harbour that divides the city.By mid-1932, the construction of the Bridge is complete, but Sydney is in chaos, on the brink of civil war, as the Great Depression begins to bite - hard.And then Yo disappears.Against the glittering backdrop of Sydney Harbour, The Blue Mile tells of the cruelties of poverty, the wild gamble a city took to build a wonder of the world, and the risks the truly brave will take for a chance at life.

    Skye is a daring and brash pilot, and Liberty the one to defy her at every turn. Even if women aren't allowed in the Royal Air Force, Skye is determined to help the war effort. She's thrilled when it reunites her with her childhood soulmate, Nicholas. She's less thrilled to learn Nicholas is now engaged to an enigmatic Frenchwoman named Margaux Jourdan.Paris, 1947: Designer Christian Dior unveils his glamorous first collection to a world weary of war and grief. He names his debut fragrance Miss Dior in tribute to his beloved sister Catherine, who forged a friendship with Skye and Margaux through her work with the French Resistance.Present Day: Fashion conservator Kat Jourdan discovers a priceless collection of Dior gowns in her grandmother's vacant cottage. As she delves into the mystery of their origin, Kat begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her beloved grandmother.

    As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the lives of the teens begin to tilt….Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back jealously. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year—and decides to keep the baby?Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that his life, too, will be shortened?Harley is fourteen—a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.Love, in all its forms, has crucial consequences in this standalone novel.

    But the life they’ve known begins to unravel when her father is recruited to the Japanese army, and Natsu and her little sister, Cricket, are left orphaned and destitute.In a desperate move to keep her sister alive, Natsu sells Cricket to a Russian family following the 1945 Soviet occupation. The journey to redemption for Natsu's broken family is rife with struggles, but Natsu is tenacious and will stop at nothing to get her little sister back.

    After watching her friends and family suffer under a deeply compromised law-enforcement system, Gorrie signed up for training to become one of a rare few Aboriginal police officers in Australia. In her ten years in the force, she witnessed appalling institutional racism and sexism, and fought past those things to provide courageous and compassionate service to civilians in need, many Aboriginal themselves.With a great gift for storytelling and a wicked sense of humour, Gorrie frankly and movingly explores the impact of racism on her family and her life, the impact of intergenerational trauma resulting from cultural dispossession, and the inevitable difficulties of making her way as an Aboriginal woman in the white-and-male-dominated workplace of the police force.Black and Blue is a memoir of remarkable fortitude and resilience, told with wit, wisdom, and great heart.

    But one man is not about to celebrate. Returning from 15 years exile, he is intent on reminding the town of the brutal acts they perpetrated during their early years of settlement.In nineteenth-century Queensland, Lieutenant Freddie Buckmaster takes a band of men to 'disperse the natives' from Mandarana, an outback town. Violence is the inevitable result. Terrified, a young mother, Kowaha, leaps from a cliff, holding her baby.Two decades after the massacre, Tom Dorahy returns to his hometown for a reunion, bringing with him memories of its dark past and an attempt to reclaim justice for the victims of that night.A Kindness Cup addresses the efforts made to forget and to remember by both white and indigenous Australians, so that they may negotiate a future together.